Lover of my soul III

Jesus changes water to wine. John 2:1-11

Here Jesus and Mary are at a wedding banquet. The guests have consumed all of the wine on hand. Mary tells Jesus they ran out of wine. He informs her His time has not come.  She proceeded to advise the servants to listen to Him anyway. He tells them to fill the six stone jars with water, draw some out, and serve the master of the banquet. He was impressed that the wine was the best he tasted throughout the banquet.

There are many things we can learn from this little scenario such as Mary’s faith when she brought the problem to Jesus, how Jesus can never turn away a request of faith whether explicit or implicit, the importance of obedience, the unconventional means Jesus uses, how Jesus included the servants in this miracle, how He always saves the best for last, how He always does everything perfectly, etc … There is one lesson we can learn here that is repeated several times throughout the Bible. It is how God uses the little we have to glorify Himself and bring forth a miracle. The first example I can recall is the widow at Zarephath. The prophet Elijiah was told to go to the widow to be fed with her household during the famine. All she had was a handful of flour and a little oil. Neither the flour nor the oil ran out until there was rainfall on the land. Please refer to I Kings 17:7-24 for the whole story. Another reference is in II Kings 4:1-7. Here a prophet’s widow is left indebted and the creditors wanted her sons as slaves. The prophet Elisha questioned what she had at home. She had some oil. He advised her to ask all of her neighbors for empty jars to fill them, sell them, pay off her debts, and live off the rest. Another example is in II Kings 4:42-44 where Elisha prophesied that 20 loaves of barley bread and some ears of corn would satisfy 100 people with some left over. And it was so. I am sure you know by now which examples are next. Yes! How Jesus fed the thousands with few fish and bread. The Bible documents two instances only. There is no way of now knowing how many times He really fed the people. We will know later. The moral of the story? Whatever little is given to God will be multiplied innumerably whether we are aware of it or not. ‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap if we do not give up.’ Galatians 6:9

Since there was wine in this scene, does this mean that Jesus advocates wine / alcohol drinking? What do you think?